Project Management Templates

The PM Milestone Project Management and Business Templates, Plans, Tools, Forms and Guides is a comprehensive package consisting of more than 7000 tried and tested Site Management and Business documents. It includes an entire methodology for managing projects and it saves you time and effort, and because each document has been professionally laid out, you can generate higher quality documentation as a result. The use of our documents alone will provide a consistent project management delivery methodology across your business, displaying professionalism, credibility and reliability to your colleagues and clients alike. Your time is too valuable to spend hours searching the Internet or building your own project management documents from scratch. With the power of our PM Milestone, youll get professional, high-quality results at a fraction of the time and cost. All documents have been written by experienced consultants, who have drawn upon years of experience across a wide range of organizations. Read more here...

PM Milestone Project Management Templates Summary

My PM Milestone Project Management Templates Review

Recently several visitors of websites have asked me about this book, which is being advertised quite widely across the Internet. So I decided to buy a copy myself to figure out what all the fuss was about.

In addition to being effective and its great ease of use, this eBook makes worth every penny of its price.

Delphi's Project Templates provide you with predesigned projects that you can use as a starting point for your applications. Project Templates are part of the Gallery (located in the DELPHI GALLERY directory), which also provides Form Templates and Experts. When you begin a project from a Project Template (other than the Blank Project Template), you are prompted to specify a project directory, a unique subdirectory in which to store the new project files. If you specify a directory that doesn't currently exist, Delphi creates it for you. From that point on, Delphi treats the template as a separate open project. You can modify it, adding new forms and units, or use it unmodified, adding only your event handler code. In either case, your changes affect only the open project. The original Project Template is unaffected and can be used again. To start a new project from a Project Template, 2 Select the Project Template you want and choose OK. A copy of the Project Template opens in the...

Another brand new feature is the Project Manager views configuration. On the right side of the toolbar, you can see a new Views button, that let's you change how the Project Manager shows files that have been placed in different folders. There are three options. I tested them by creating a sample program (called ProjManagerTest) with two forms in the main folder and two units in a secondary folder called Shared and placed at the same level in the file system hierarchy ProjMairiagerTest.dproj - Project Manager List is a new view corresponding to the traditional Delphi 7 list of files in the project manager. Directories are simply ignored and you get an alphabetic list of files ProjManagerTest.dproj - Project Manager

The Project Manager window shows you the current files in your project. To view the Project Manager, choose View Project Manager from the main menu. Figure 10.1 shows the Project Manager window for the Scratchpad program created on Day 6. The Project Manager window tells you at a glance the state of each file in the project. Files that are up-to-date are displayed in a regular font files that have been modified but have not yet been saved are shown in a bold font. This serves to remind you which of your files have changed since you last saved the project. You will notice in Figure 10.1 that the Project Manager file list has three columns. The first column shows the name of the source unit that represents that file. For example, the source unit for the main form of the Scratchpad program is called SPMain.cpp. The last column in the File list of the Project Manager window contains the path where the file is located. This column is always blank for files that reside in the project's own...

When you start a new project, it automatically opens a blank form, too. If you want to base a new project on one of the form objects or wizards, this is not what you want. To solve this problem, you can add an Empty Project template to the Gallery. When you select this project from the Object Repository, you gain two advantages. You have your project without a form, and you can pick a directory where the project template's files will be copied. There is also a disadvantage you need to use the File Save Project As command to give a new name to the project, since saving the project automatically uses the default name in the template.

The Delphi Project Manager provides a high-level view of the form and unit files listed in the uses clause of your .DPR file. (It looks at the in directive to get the file names.) You can use the Project Manager to open, add, save, and remove project files, and to open the Project Options dialog box, where you can configure project default settings. You access the Project Manager window by means of the View menu. If you share files among different projects, using the Project Manager is recommended because you can quickly and easily tell the location of each file in the project. This is especially helpful to know when creating backups that include all files the project uses. (See page 139 for more information on making backups.)

The Project Manager has a speed menu to aid you in project management. Many of the items on the speed menu are also available via the speedbar. Figure 10.3 shows the Project Manager speed menu. Table 10.1 lists the speed menu items along with a description of what each item does. The Project Manager speed menu. Table 10.1. The Project Manager speed menu items. Several of the speed menu items are also accessible from the main menu, from the Project Manager speedbar, or via keyboard shortcuts.

Interop assemblies (including ActiveX Control wrapper assemblies) generated by the IDE are kept in a separate folder called COMImports, underneath your project. Each generated assembly will have its 'Copy Local' property set, meaning that when the project is built, the assembly will be copied to the folder where the final build target of the project is kept. The exceptions to this rule are primary interop assemblies, which are deployed in the GAC. When you add a reference to a primary interop assembly, the IDE will not copy the assembly to the COMImports folder. The assembly will still be shown in the Project Manager, however, if you right click on it to display its properties, you will notice that the 'Copy Local' setting is turned off. The list of referenced assemblies (including those that are not interop assemblies) is an attribute of your project. If the COMImports folder (or one of the interop assemblies contained therein) does not exist when you open a project, the IDE will...

There are enough small changes in the Project Manager to devote a small section to it. Being one of the most commonly used panes of the IDE, even minor changes in it become significant. Before we look into this, let me underline that project files (the new .dproj format used by MSBUILD and introduced in Delphi 2007) remain identical to Delphi 2009, to the point that they even carry the same version number 12.0. The actual version number of Delphi 2010, in fact, is 149. After this brief introduction to the project files format, here are the new features of the Project Manager Where there are multiple projects open in the Project Manager, the project group local menu will also have the Compile All, Build All, and Clean All commands, as shown here on the side. Individual project nodes have a new From Here menu item, with a sub-menu hosting the three Compile All From Here, Build All From Here, and Clean All From Here commands. You can drag a file from the editor to the Project Manager...

If you know how to create Object Pascal units and compile an application, you already know all you need to know to create assemblies using packages. Using the IDE Wizard to create a new package and adding a new unit to that package generates a file similar to the one shown in Listing 6.1. This file is viewable by right-clicking the package node in the Project Manager and selecting View Source from the local menu.

In Delphi 5, however, you can use a simpler approach. You can take the RC file and simply add it to the project using the Project Manager Add command or simply dragging the file to the project. Delphi 5 will automatically activate the resource compiler, and it will then bind the resource file into the executable file. These operations are controlled by an extended resource inclusion directive added to the project source code

If you have a number of windows open, such as the Delphi Project Manager or Object Browser, you can easily get to the window you want by selecting it in the Window List dialog box. This dialog box displays a list of all open windows, and enables you to bring any of them to the front.

As I mentioned earlier and you can see from the images on the previous pages, the Project Manager has a new Build Configurations node for every project (that is, in cases where you are working with a project group with multiple projects active). This node replaces the rather cumbersome separ In the Project Manager you can also select a build configuration and export its settings to an option set file. This is like saving a configuration template or skeleton to an external file, and the configuration will be linked to the file. This makes it easy to move those same settings to a new or another existing project, as you can use the Project Manager (using the Apply Options Set local menu item while on a build configuration) or the Project Options dialog box (using the Apply Options button) to import a set of configuration options. In both cases Delphi opens up the Apply Option Set dialog box, in which you can pick a file and choose whether to keep the external configura Once you have...

6 Select View Project Manager from the Delphi main menu. 7 Right-click over the project name in the Project Manager (usually Project1.exe) and select the Add menu option. Add the rbDrillD form to the project. 8 Right-click over the project name in the Project Manager and select the Save menu option.

With the build options available directly in the Project Manager pane, you don't have to use the Configuration Manager to change the current build configuration. Still, this dialog box was quite handy as it let you change the build configuration for many projects in a project group at the same time. In fact, the Configuration Manager is also available in Delphi 2009, and in a much improved version that let's you manage the various build configuration and option sets for all of the projects of a group at once. To invoke the Configuration Manager you don't use the local menu of the Project Manager, as in Delphi 2007, but select the corresponding item in the Project menu of the IDE. When you do, you'll get this redesigned user interface When you are working on multiple projects within a project group, the Configuration Manager has a distinct advantage over browsing in the Project Manager to work on the build configurations. For single projects, the Project Manager now has all you need.

2 Display the Project Manager using ViewlProject Manager. Expand your project so all of its units are visible. 3 In the Project Manager, click the New button to create a new Web server application project. Double-click the WebSnap Application item in the WebSnap tab. Select the appropriate options for your project, including the server type you want to use, then click OK. 4 Expand the new project in the Project Manager. Select any files appearing there and delete them.

We will make use of the Local InterBase Server that ships with some versions of Delphi to explore the functioning of the StoredProd component and stored procedures in general. The project that we will build is called the Project Manager, and it works with the sample InterBase files in the IBLocal darabase. If you have not installed the LIBS, this database will not appear in the Database Explorer. Remember that the stored procedures are a part of the metadata of the database, so all of the information pertaining to the structure of the procedures can be viewed through the Database Explorer. The Project Manager maim The Project Manager maim Caption the form Project Manager and save the project. Name the unit file stprocu2.pas and the project stproc2.dpr. Modifyrng the Project Manager project Modifyrng the Project Manager project

From the main menu or right-clicking in the Project Manager and selecting Add Reference After the reference is added, the appropriate namespaces can be added to the uses clause. Listing 6.6 shows a sample project unit that uses both the package and library assemblies created previously. Code from these assemblies is referenced on lines 13 and 14 of the listing.

In the most recent versions of Delphi, you could add resource scripts (.RC files) or compiled resource files (.RES files) to the Project Manager to let it compile them along with the project linking them to the executable. In Delphi 2009 managing resources has been simplified by the inclusion of a few more tools. First, you can now drag individual resource files to the Project Manager to get them included as resources in a project. You can drag icons, bitmaps, and more. Delphi will generate a resource script files for these extra project resources, and compile it directly along with your program, embedding these resources in the executable. You can change any attribute of these resource files (including their internal name) in the Object Inspector By adding a few resources to a project, at compile time Delphi will generate a proper resource file for you. For the ResourceTest program (with the resources depicted above), Delphi 2009 generates a resource script file listing the project...

Important No unit files are saved to the new location. When you open the copied version, the Project Manager displays all units in the copied project as shared files that is, none of them reside in the project directory of the currently open project. If you check the constituent file list in the Project Manager, you will see that all the files in the currently open version of the project reside in a directory other than the current project directory. If you want separate copies of any of those files in the new project directory, you need to save them individually to the new location using FilelSave File As. (See Creating a backup of an entire project on page 139 for more information.) If you leave the new project unchanged, it continues to use the files in their present (that is, old) location as shared files, which might or might not be what you want. If you don't understand how the new project is using its constituent files, you can run into problems later (see Project Manager Path...

Project groups are a great benefit for complex projects, but using project groups is not mandatory. You don't have to use project groups with every project. The Project Manager has a default project group called ProjectGroupl that is used when you don't specifically open or create a project group. Try this 3. Choose View Project Manager to display the Project Manager. The Project Manager is displayed as shown in Figure 9.2. FIGURE 9.2. The Project Manager showing the default project group. The project group called ProjectGroupl is a temporary project group. When you choose Save All from the File menu, you are prompted to save the project, but not the project group. If you want to save the project group, you must explicitly save it using the Save Project Group or Save Project Group As menu item from the Project Manager context menu. Adding existing units to your projects is as simple as clicking the Add To Project button on the Project Manager toolbar or choosing Add To Project from...

During runtime, assemblies must be in the output path of the project or in the Global Assembly Cache (GAC) for deployment. In the Project Manager, you can right-click an assembly and use the Copy Local setting to copy the reference to the local output path. Follow these guidelines to determine whether a reference must be copied.

Choose View Project Manager from the main menu. The Project Manager is displayed. 4. Drag the Project Manager over the Code Explorer window. When the drag rectangle snaps into place in the center of the Code Explorer window, release the mouse button. The floating tool window should now look similar to Figure 4.15. Notice that the floating tool window has become a tabbed window and has the title Tool Windows. You can click on either of the two tabs to see the Code Explorer or the Project Manager. FIGURE 4.15. The Code Explorer and Project Manager docked together in a tool window. 5. Drag the tool window back to the left side of the Code Editor and dock it there. Now you have both the Code Explorer and the Project Manager docked where you can get to them easily whenever you want them.

From the Project Manager (or from the Project menu), you can invoke the Project Options dialog. The first page of Project Options, named Forms, lists the forms that should be created automatically at program startup (the default behavior) and the forms that are created manually by the program. You can easily move a form from one list to the other. The next page, Application, is used to set the name of the application and the name of its Help file, and to choose its icon. Other Project Options choices relate to the Delphi compiler and linker, version information, and the use of run-time packages.

This creates an instance of the typed DataSet and displays an icon &lt DataSet Name&gt 1 in the Component Tray. For example, if your DataSet is DataSet1, the new instance will be named dataSet11. You will also see that an XML .xsd file and a new program file appear in the Project Manager under your project.

Note The default name convention for the new class and source code file is EcoWinFormX.pas, where X is a progressively increasing number. You can change the default name of the class in the Source Code Editor. The name of the source code file can be changed in the Project Manager window.

Unlike the Project Manager, the Model View window lets you navigate your project based on the logical relationships between the classes and other elements in source code. The Model View window actually presents these relationships from two very different perspectives code visualization, which derives a UML class diagram from arbitrary Delphi code, and visualization of ECO-enabled packages and classes. Code visualization scans source code and derives the elements, such as namespaces and classes, and the relationships between them. Therefore, you can think of code visualization as a superset, or raw

1- Open your project and select View Project Manager to display the Project Manager window if it is not already open. In addition to the other assemblies your project references, there are five ECO-specific assemblies that must be deployed with all ECO applications (these assemblies are displayed under your project's References node in the Project Manager window)

The default new form opens whenever you choose FilelNew Form or use the Project Manager to add a new form to an open project. In a new Delphi installation, the Blank Form template is the default. You can specify any other Form Template, including a form you have created and saved as a Form Template, as the default new form. Or you can designate a Form Expert to run by default when a new form is added to a project.

For example, suppose you develop custom billing applications. You might have a generic billing application project that contains the forms and functionality common to all billing systems. Your business centers around adding and modifying features in this application to meet specific client requirements. In such a case, you might want to save the project containing your Generic Billing application as a Project Template and optionally specify it as the default new project on your Delphi development system. Likewise, you'll probably have a particular form within this project that you want to appear as the default main or new form. 3 On the Project Templates page, choose Add to display the Save Project Template dialog box. 8 Choose OK to put your choices into effect, and save the current project as a Project Template. Note If you later make changes to a Project Template, you will need to resave the project as a template, not merely as a project. To add a form to the Gallery as a Template,...

Kylix's development environment includes a visual form designer, Object Inspector, Component palette, Project Manager, source code editor, and debugger. You can move freely from the visual representation of an object (in the form designer), to the Object Inspector to edit the initial runtime state of the object, to the source code editor to edit the execution logic of the object. Changing code-related properties, such as the name of an event handler, in the Object Inspector automatically changes the corresponding source code. In addition, changes to the source code, such as renaming an event handler method in a form class declaration, is immediately reflected in the Object Inspector.

You can add a project to the Repository by using the Project Add to Repository command, or by using the corresponding item of the local menu of the Project Manager window. As a very simple example, just to demonstrate the process, the following steps describe how you can save the slightly modified version of the default SDI template (shown earlier) as a template 2. Select the Project Add to Repository menu command (or the Add Project to Repository command in the local menu of the Project Manager window). 3. In the Add to Repository dialog box, enter a title, a description for the new project template, and the name of the author. You can also choose an icon to indicate the new template or accept the default image. Finally, choose the page of the Repository where you wish to add the project. Now, each time you open the Object Repository, it will include your custom template. If you later discover that the template is not useful any more, you can remove it. You can also use a project...

Your application's ECO Space is implemented in one source file. The default source file name is EcoSpace.pas. To open the ECO Space designer and begin work, double-click the source code file in the Project Manager window, and then click the Design tab. This document first describes the basic procedure for configuring an ECO Space. Each step is then explained in more detail in the following sections.

Just as you can add new project templates to the Object Repository, you can also add new form templates. Simply move to the form that you want to add and select the Add To Repository command of its shortcut menu. Then indicate the title, description, author, page, and icon in its dialog box. The Empty Project Template When you start a new project, it automatically opens a blank form, too. If you want to base a new project on one of the form objects or Wizards, this is not what you want, however. To solve this problem, you can add an Empty Project template to the Gallery. When you select this project from the Object Repository, you gain two advantages You have your project without a form, and you can pick a directory where the project template's files will be copied. There is also a disadvantage you have to remember to use the File Save Project As command to give a new name to the project, because saving the project any other way automatically uses the default name in the template.

Although this is a nice addition, I think I'd still prefer using the project management features of the Welcome page, which let's you pick specific projects and mark them as favorites, so that they remain available over time. In the Welcome page you can also group favorite projects and manage these categories. If you are used to that (like I am), the extensions to the recent files will help you only with individual files and units, not with projects. Though using both techniques together gives the best of both worlds.

Configuring Delphi 8 for .NET and your source control system to interact is a simple task. First, install and configure your source control system itself. If you are an individual developer or in a small shop, you might be required to perform this task yourself. Otherwise, if you are in a large, distributed environment, it is likely that your system administrator or project manager handles this task. In any case, refer to the documentation for your particular source control system to perform the installation and configuration before you attempt to use source control capabilities in Delphi 8 for .NET and to learn more about how your system operates. After your source control system is installed and configured, Delphi 8 for .NET auto-detects which system you have installed.

As discussed in Chapter 1, you can choose from a number of options that control what occurs when you begin a new project in Delphi. In a default installation of Delphi, opening a new project displays a blank form, based on the Blank Project template. You can change this default behavior in several ways. By changing Gallery options, (setting Gallery options is discussed on page 124) you can Specify the default new project to be one of the other Delphi Project Templates, including any project you have created and saved as a Project Template. (Saving a project as a Project Template is discussed on page 126.) The following section discusses how to begin a new project from one of the non-default Delphi Project Templates. Customizing project options on page 123 describes how to set your preferred project options or modify project options set by another Delphi user.

Assuming that step 1 is completed, adding the Web Reference is simple. Simply select the project within the Project Manager in the IDE and invoke the local menu by right-clicking. One of the options is Add Web Reference (see Figure 28.9). FIGURE 28.9 Add Web Reference menu from the Project Manager. FIGURE 28.9 Add Web Reference menu from the Project Manager.

Just as you can add new project templates to the Object Repository, you can also add new form templates. Simply move to the form you want to add, right-click on it, and select Add to Repository from the local menu. In the dialog box that appears (see below), you can choose which form of the current project should be added to the Repository, and set the title, description, author, page, and icon, as usual. Once you have set these elements and clicked on OK, the form is added to the proper page of the Object Repository.

The default new project opens whenever you choose New Project from the File menu on the Delphi menu bar. In a new Delphi installation the Blank Project template is the default. You can specify any other Project Template (including a project you have created and saved as a Project Template) as the default new project. Alternatively, you can designate a Project Expert to run by default when a new project is begun. Specifying a Project Template To specify a Project Template as the default new project, 2 Choose the Project Templates page tab. 3 Select the project template you want as the default new project. Instead of opening a Project Template by default when you begin a new project, you can run a Project Expert instead.

You can easily toggle between viewing the currently displayed form and its unit source code by using commands from the View menu, a keyboard shortcut, or the Project Manager. You can also view or edit any open unit or form by choosing commands from the View menu, buttons on the Project Manager SpeedBar, or commands from the Project Manager SpeedMenu. In the Project Manager, double-click in the Unit column of the unit you want to display its source code, or the Form column to display the form image.

You can include reports in Delphi 8 for .NET just as you would other 3rd-party components. The report is stored as a separate Rave Report object. You can reference the report in any number of applications that have a need to call or generate that report. When you create a new application, you can include the report object by adding a reference to it in the Project Manager. Rave Reports also provide the capability to connect your report object to a datasource, which allows the report to be built dynamically based on up-to-date database information. For more information about Rave Reports and about connecting to data sources, refer to the Rave Reports online help.

The 6th incarnation62 of the Galileo IDE has only a limited set of new capabilities, if you don't take into account the fact that everything has been converted to Unicode, which was probably far from trivial. The most relevant improvements relate with the new extensions to the Project Manager and the ability to share project options among different projects, using the new options files. Windows resource management improves significantly in Delphi 2009, too.

There is another significant change (which I don't like really) in the way the project manager behaves when building multiple projects. What used to happen when doing a Build All was that each project would become the active project in turn and you could use this visual clue to see the progress of a long compilation. Now you get information about each project while it compiles, but no overall view.

As you create new projects, create new forms and units in projects, and share files from other projects, keeping track of what files a project uses and where those files are stored becomes more and more necessary. The Delphi Project Manager makes this task and several others easier to do, and more centrally accessible.

In this section we'll look at the Project Options dialog box. You can invoke this dialog box by choosing Options Project from the main menu, pressing Alt+F6 on the keyboard, or choosing Options from the Project Manager speed menu. The Project Options dialog box is a tabbed dialog box with several pages

Delphi 2005 provides you with seamless integration with StarTeam, enabling access to all of StarTeam's capabilities without leaving the Delphi 2005 IDE. The Delphi 2005 main menu includes a StarTeam main menu item, as well as a submenu on the Project Manager context menu. This menu is shown in the following figure.

There is one other type of dock site that I want to mention. If you have a tool window open (such as the Project Manager), you can dock another tool window to it. This enables two or more Delphi windows to be hosted within the same tool window. For example, the Code Explorer and Project Manager can both be docked in the same floating tool window. A floating tool window has five dock sites right, left, top, bottom, and center.

The Project Manager doesn't provide a way to set the options of two different projects at one time. What you can do instead is invoke the Project Options dialog from the Project Manager for each project. The first page of Project Options (Forms) lists the forms that should be created automatically at program startup and the forms that are created manually by the program. The next page (Application) is used to set the name of the application and the name of its Help file, and to choose its icon. Other Project Options choices relate to the Delphi compiler and linker, version information, and the use of run-time packages.

You can add a Web Reference to your client application to access Web Services applications. A Web Reference refers to either a WSDL document or an XML schema, which is imported into your client application. The WSDL document or XML schema describes a Web Service application. When you import one of these documents, Delphi 8 for .NET generates the interfaces and class definitions needed for calling that Web Service application. Right-click the WebService node in the Project Manager and select Add Web Reference. A UDDI Browser appears. You must navigate within the browser and locate your Web Service's WSDL document in order to add the Web Services to your client application.

The IDE creates Interop Assemblies in a subdirectory of your project directory named Comlmports. When the application is launched, the Interop Assembly would not normally be found in this location. (It isn't installed in the Global Assembly Cache and is not in a directory that would be found through probing the application base or culture directories.) Because of this, the reference to the Interop Assembly in the Project Manager has its Copy Local option set on its context menu, as shown in Figure 16.4, as well as displayed on the Object Inspector (see Figure 16.2).

Typed DataSets provide you more control over the layout of the data you retrieve from a data source. A typed DataSet derives from a DataSet class. The typed DataSet lets you access tables and columns by name rather than by way of collection methods. The typed DataSet feature provides better readability, improved code completion capabilities, and data type enforcement unavailable with standard DataSets. The compiler checks for type mismatches of typed DataSet elements at compile-time rather than runtime. When you create a typed dataset, you will see that some new objects are created for you and are accessible by way of the Project Manager. You will notice two files named after your dataset. One file is an XML .xsd file and the other is a code file, in the language you are using. All of the data about your dataset, including the table and column data from the database connection, is stored in the .xsd file. The program code file is created based on the XML in the .xsd file. If you want...

Note If the project was begun from a Project Template, the Gallery selection process creates the project directory. Otherwise, Delphi saves projects by default to the BIN directory, unless you specify otherwise. Choose the Save Project command on the Project Manager SpeedMenu.

The project lists the source code files that are part of it, and any related forms. This list is visible both in the project source and in the Project Manager, and is used to compile or rebuild a project. First, each source code file is turned into a Delphi compiled unit, a file with the same name as the Pascal source file and the DCU extension. For example, Unitl.pas is compiled into Unitl.dcu.

You can view the contents of a project in a project management tool called the Project Manager. The Project Manager lists, in a hierarchical view, the unit names, the forms contained in the unit (if there is one), and shows the paths to the files in the project. Although you can edit many of these files directly, it is often easier and more reliable to use the visual tools in Kylix. At the top of the project hierarchy, is a group file. You can combine multiple projects into a project group. This allows you to open more than one project at a time in the Project Manager. Project groups let you organize and work on related projects, such as applications that function together or parts of a multi-tiered application. If you are only working on one project, you do not need a project group file to create an application. Project files, which describe individual projects, files, and associated options, have a .dpr extension. Project files contain directions for building an application or...

The uses clause provides the compiler with information about dependencies among modules. Because this information is stored in the modules themselves, Object Pascal programs do not require makefiles, header files, or preprocessor include directives. (The Project Manager generates a makefile each time a project is loaded in the IDE, but saves these files only for project groups that include more than one project.)

The Project Manager provides shortcuts for viewing a unit's source file or form. To view a unit's source file, double-click on the unit's filename (in the File column). To view a form, double-click on the form name in the Form column. Double-clicking on units that do not have a source file has no effect.

The Delphi 2005 Object Inspector, which you use to configure objects placed on your form at design time, has also been updated. Not only does the Object Inspector permit you to configure properties and events for the objects that you have placed into the designer, but you can also use it to control file names and get information about objects that you select in the Project Manager. For example, select a file in the Project Manager, such as an .aspx file in an ASP.NET Web application, and the file path and file name will appear in the Object Inspector, as shown in the following figure.

Be used to display one of the windows of the Delphi environment, such as Project Manager, the Breakpoints list, or the Components command. Some of these windows are used during debugging others when you are writing code. Most of these windows will be described later in this chapter.

In addition to the two files describing the form (PAS and DFM), a third file is vital for rebuilding the application. This is the Delphi project file (DPR). This file is built automatically, and you seldom need to change it, particularly for small programs. If you do need to change the behavior of a project, there are basically two ways to do so You can use the Delphi Project Manager and set some project options, or you can manually edit the project file directly. I Project Manager

Normally, you should store each Delphi project you create in its own directory. If you begin a project using any Project Template other than the Blank Project template, Delphi prompts you for a directory path and then (if necessary) creates the specified directory for the project. If you begin with the Blank Project template, Delphi saves it by default in the BIN directory, unless you specify otherwise. To avoid cluttering this directory, and potentially overwriting files, create the project directory from the Windows operating environment before saving the new project for the first time. (See Beginning a project with a Project Template on page 122 for more information about Project Templates.)

The Welcome Page contains buttons to access and open projects. You can also access the latest online Help information by clicking the Help button. The Project button opens an existing project or project group . The New button opens the Object Repository and lets you select from a variety of project templates to create yourdesired .NET application. You can also choose File New Other and select the template most appropriate for your user interface design.

Delphi's multitarget Project Manager (View Project Manager) works on a project group, which can have one or more projects under it. For example, a project group can include a DLL and an executable file, or multiple executable files. In Delphi 6, all open packages will show up as projects in the Project Manager view, even if they haven't been added to the project group. In Figure 1.9, you can see the Project Manager with the project group for the current chapter. As you can see, the Project Manager is based on a tree view, which shows the hierarchical structure of the project group, the projects, and all of the forms and units that make up each project. You can use the simple toolbar and the more complex shortcut menus of the Project Manager to operate on it. The shortcut menu is context-sensitive its options depend on the selected item. There are menu items to add a new or existing project to a project group, to compile or build a specific project, or to open a unit. Of all the...

The Update button updates the project after the project source file has been modified. Normally, this button is disabled. If you manually change the project source file, the Update button is enabled and all files in the Project Manager file list will be grayed out. Clicking the Update button will ensure that all files in the project are reconciled. This button is also enabled after you change the project options.

The updated Project Options dialog, the new features of the Project Manager and the extended build configurations, the improved support for resources, and the Class Explorer are probably the most significant new features of the IDE in Delphi 2009, if you don't consider the fact that the entire IDE has been Unicode enabled.

The dockable windows in the Delphi IDE are a great feature. You can arrange the tool windows you use most often in any way you want. You no longer have to go hunting for a Project Manager, Watch List, or Object Inspector hidden under other windows. The window you are looking for is just a couple of mouse clicks away.

Web page modules may have an associated template file that is managed as part of the unit. A managed template file appears in the project manager and has the same base file name and location as the unit service file. If the Web page module does not have an associated template file then the properties of the page producer component specify the template.

Delphi 8 for .NET is a resource-centric type of system, which means that the primary code-behind representations are of event handlers that you fill in with your program logic. Visual components are declared and defined in textual files, given the extension of .dfm (for Delphi Forms) or .nfm (for Delphi 8 for .NET forms). The .nfm files are created by Delphi 8 for .NET as you design your VCL Forms on the Forms Designer, and are listed in the resource list in the Project Manager for the given project.

Project Management Made Easy

What you need to know about… Project Management Made Easy! Project management consists of more than just a large building project and can encompass small projects as well. No matter what the size of your project, you need to have some sort of project management. How you manage your project has everything to do with its outcome.